Troubles in port, at sea weigh down Navy ship

The crew of the New Orleans could find plenty of reasons to sing the blues.

The Navy amphibious assault ship was battered by Hurricane Katrina while being built in its namesake city. It arrived at its home port of San Diego 16 months ago – two years behind schedule, 90 percent over budget and needing 400,000 hours' worth of construction work.

In mid-August, the New Orleans stumbled in a major test at sea.

A report from the Navy's Bureau of Inspection and Survey described 2,600 problems, including “ongoing deficiencies” with the steering system and an unreliable propulsion system.

“USS New Orleans was degraded in her ability to conduct sustained combat operations,” the report said. “The ship cannot support embarked troops, cargo or landing craft.”

Navy officials said most of the problems have been fixed. They expect the ship to embark on its first deployment early next year.

The New Orleans is the second vessel in the LPD-17 class of high-tech amphibious assault ships, which ferry Marines and their equipment to and from war zones. The lead vessel, the San Antonio, took 10 years to deliver and saw its cost double from $750 million to $1.5 billion.

These ordeals make the LPD-17 series one of the most troubled shipbuilding programs ever, some Navy analysts said. It also is the latest in a line of military weapons programs – especially those for the Navy and Air Force – that have suffered from poor quality, extensive delays and galloping cost overruns.

Last year, the Navy scrubbed two of four San Diego-bound prototypes for its new Littoral Combat Ship because costs had more than doubled. Congress and the Pentagon also have slashed production of the new DDG-1000 destroyer from 32 ships to three, and they have trimmed purchases of the Air Force's F-22 fighter by two-thirds, according to the Congressional Research Service.

“We are now getting fewer ships and aircraft for more money, and they're not working,” said Winslow Wheeler, a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C., a think tank frequently critical of Pentagon spending. “The Navy and the Air Force have made laughingstocks out of themselves.”

In the New Orleans report, inspectors also noted broken ventilation fans, inoperable elevators and corrosion on the flight deck. The galley had to be shut down until firefighting equipment there could be fixed.

“It has a lot of problems that are surprising for a ship that's been in the fleet” for about a year and a half, said Jan van Tol, retired commander of a Navy amphibious assault ship and a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.

“On an inspection trial like this, you would hope that most of the major systems would be operating,” van Tol added.

But the New Orleans' top officers are upbeat.

Eighty-five percent of the deficiencies listed in the recent report were minor issues such as oversprayed paint or inoperative lights, according to a statement from the Naval Sea Systems command.